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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23849815">Where the Quiet Waters Flow</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/sobelow/pseuds/sobelow'>sobelow</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Red Strings Club (Video Game)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alcohol, Buses, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Horror Elements, Loneliness, Mysterious Old Houses, New England, Past Character Death, Post-Canon, Supernatural Elements, bad choices</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-04-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 20:54:10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,363</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23849815</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/sobelow/pseuds/sobelow</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>The club’s too quiet without Brandeis. Donovan used to like the quiet, the long space between customers, but now he misses the sound of piano, echoing in through the storm and the city. Now it weighs down on him, oppressive, heavy.</em>
</p><p>For the prompt: "any fandom! a character of your choice comes into possession of a strange house (from the will of a dead unknown relative maybe! the last gift of an estranged friend! mysterious ad from craigslist! however you want!) in a secluded, overgrown area. why not check it out? free property could be useful. unfortunately (or fortunately) the house is alive, and it knows what it wants."</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>things that go bump: a ficathon for every kind of weirdness</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">



        <li>In response to a prompt by
            Anonymous in the <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/collections/thingsthatgobump">thingsthatgobump</a>
          collection.
        </li>
    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Title from Vor í Vaglaskógi by Kaleo.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The club’s too quiet without Brandeis. Donovan used to like the quiet, the long space between customers, but now he misses the sound of piano, echoing in through the storm and the city. Now it weighs down on him, oppressive, heavy.</p><p>There’s nothing left for him in the club these days. Customers, sure. Even in number, sometimes. But none of them mean anything. At least his knee’s been doing better. He can get up the stairs to the roof without needing to stop and rest. Back down’s another story, but, well, he has the elevator for that. In unrelated news, rumor has it the bus service has undergone a shocking reversal of its trend to run later and later. Almost like it wants riders.</p><p>Akara really couldn’t be any clearer, huh? They want him out of here.</p><p>It’s not like he doesn’t know just how much of a thorn he must be in their side. He’s done his research. Brandeis may have been a not inconsiderable part of his connection to the rebel element, but Donovan still knows some people. He was able to get access to the Supercontinent security footage. Of course, being an information broker means you have to give as well as take. It’s a responsibility. Some things shouldn’t be kept secret anyway, but that didn’t make it easier to break the news to them that Brandeis was dead.</p><p>At least it kept them from looking at the footage themselves. He deleted the footage on his way out. Akara’s his problem.</p><p>Honestly, maybe he’d rather it that way. Akara’s a parasite, sure, a virus in the system, but isn’t he one too? They just do what he does, on a grander scale. And they have constraints to how much they’ll meddle. Donovan’s only constraint is that he can’t leave the club, but that’s been looking less and less real lately. He’s starting to suspect that his oh-so-mysterious disease of bad luck was entirely Akara’s influence from the start.</p><p>Donovan’s phone buzzes in his pocket. He never used to use the damned thing. Why bother, when he had real people, in the present? In the oppressive quiet of the bar, though, there’s nothing stopping him from a little sudoku. Scrolling social media. The usual. The ping of a notification is almost as good as the sound of the club’s door opening used to be. He knows he’s letting Akara into his life. Whatever. They don’t mean him harm, and it’s not like he can stop them.</p><p>Donovan swipes his phone unlocked. He could probably get it implanted now, but it works fine like this. Ain’t broke, he won’t try to fix it. There’s one new email. Looks like spam, some kind of ad for a rural manor. He opens it up anyway, takes a look at the pictures.</p><p>
  <em>Get off the grid! Live life to its fullest!</em>
</p><p>Fat chance. The grid is all he has these days. He’s desperate enough to read spam email, why would he want to leave the grid behind? Akara’s his fate, he’s accepted it.</p><p>On the Supercontinent security footage, Akara had mentioned him and fate. Donovan can’t quite remember what they said. It’s three in the morning. Bar’s closed, nobody’s going to walk in on him if he takes a look at his saved copy of the video. That’s another reason to want his phone physical: Supercontinent doesn’t have much of a reason to go looking through his files. Donovan skips to the right place almost immediately. Damn, Brandeis’ face hurts to see. But he’s here for Akara this time. There.</p><p>
  <em>He’s bending fate to his caprice, similar to me; at a microscopic scale in comparison, of course, but manipulating fate just the same.</em>
</p><p>Right. Akara saw the parallel too. They’re just like him, only on a grander scale, and a little bit less avoidable. Everything down to the spam email was probably their fault. Although, he supposes, if they were able to influence them, he could probably influence right back. If he wanted. Damn, he misses Brandeis. Smile on his face, penchant for danger. He’d wade right in. Well, he did, and it got him killed.</p><p>Donovan doesn’t want to think about it. He reaches under the bar and pours himself a glass, not thinking about the motions, just mixing something. It won’t be anything meaningful--unfortunately, his mixing talents don’t work on himself. He takes a slow sip.</p><p><em>Ping.</em> Donovan unlocks his phone and takes a look. It’s a duplicate of the spam email--wait. What?</p><p>Apparently he just bought a manor house in rural Maine. Or something bought him one.</p><p>He types out a bemused reply to the email, sends it. The reply is immediate: sent to a no-reply address, the email bounced. Donovan rereads the various emails. There is no mention of an owner, no phone number, no other email address. He clicks the link to the real estate website. It doesn’t connect. He searches up the name of the real estate agency. Nothing. He looks up the house’s address.</p><p>There it stands, only barely visible from the road where the street-view car had driven by.</p><p>It is late, and Donovan has been drinking. He should go to bed, and this will all have gone away by morning.</p><p>~</p><p>The emails are still there. Still no contact information. The house still stands, shrouded by trees. Donovan’s curiosity is piqued, and he doesn’t think any of his contacts are likely to have answers. But he asks them anyway, because it is what he does.</p><p>Marcia drops by that night. She deals in society rumors, she’d have heard if this happened to anyone else. Nothing. There are more customers, though, and Donovan can’t spare much worry about it except to ask them if they’ve heard of anything like it. No one has. It doesn’t seem the usual category of spam email, either.</p><p>The next night, he gets lucky. Coburn’s an old friend, and he happens to be a realtor. Coburn readily agrees that Donovan’s situation is a strange one. Still, probably a scam. No money was transferred, as Donovan’s bank account confirms. Not worth the effort to think about. Donovan has always disliked that about Coburn, if he’s being honest. Not a care for other people’s problems. But, Coburn says, he’ll put in a word at the office. Check to see who the house’s current owner is listed as. Donovan thanks him and mixes the next customer a glass of Curiosity.</p><p>Mid-afternoon, Donovan gets an email from Coburn. The house is listed under Donovan’s name.</p><p>Donovan flips the window sign to Closed and buys a bus ticket to Maine.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Thank you very much for your kind words on the last chapter. This one would not exist without them.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Donovan spends the first half of the bus ride with earbuds in but nothing playing through them, staring out the window as the buildings of the city get shorter and then fade into suburbs, into patches of rural houses, into nothing but skeletal winter trees as far as he can see. The seasons have been irrelevant for years now, affecting nothing but the amount of rain and whether the pub down the street had the patio open. It’s strange to see them put on display like this. It’s strange to see the heavy grey sky without the glare of lights visible even in the day.</p><p>He flips open his phone and puts on December by George Winston. Donovan was never religious, but he thinks the first notes of the album sound like a prayer somehow. The sparsely traced chords fit well against the hills that have begun to swell up like waves along the horizon.</p><p>Donovan has no idea what the house is going to be like. He looked at the pictures, sure, but there has to be a story to be uncovered. Maybe in another life, Donovan would have made a good journalist. But then again, maybe not. He’s never been good at working on a deadline. There’s a reason he hasn’t bought a return ticket yet: he doesn’t know how long it will take to work out what happened with the house. And it’s not like it was hard for him to pack everything he’ll need for a month or more. Just some old books, a journal, some jewelry, and a few coats on top of what he would have packed for a weekend trip. He’s probably forgetting something. He doesn’t really care.</p><p>If this all falls through, the taxi fare is going to be ridiculous.</p><p>The bus driver drops Donovan at a grocery store not too far down the road from the house. He didn’t even consider his bad knee when he asked to be dropped there, but somehow it doesn’t seem too important. He’ll get there, one way or another. </p><p>His duffel doesn’t feel quite as heavy as it should, and the walk passes quickly. The album has looped around to the beginning a few times since Donovan first put it on. He takes out one earbud. All of the sounds are strange. Birds sing. Branches rattle in the faint wind. No cars pass. Donovan puts the earbud back in.</p><p>Donovan almost walks right past the house. </p><p>It’s almost the same slate-gray as the trees surrounding it, but slightly taller. Two stories. Paint peeling just a little, mildewing at the edges. Donovan walks up and drops his duffel on the stoop before trying the door. For a brief and terrifying moment, it refuses to budge. Then, something like a little shudder echoes through the whole house. The door swings open. Donovan walks in.</p><p>The house is beautiful. Warm wood floors, a green and red rug in the entryway, winter light shining in through high windows. Donovan takes a few steps further in. The house feels almost like it’s drawing him in; Donovan only barely remembers to bring in his bag before exploring.</p><p>On the ground floor, a living room with an enticing overabundance of bookshelves. A kitchen full of charmingly dated appliances. An old-fashioned garage full of what must be outdoors gear. A small bathroom with a round mirror. The one closed door leads to a guest room. Donovan only sticks his head in for a moment before leaving and closing the door. Something’s wrong in there. Besides, the upstairs is beckoning.</p><p>The second floor is much smaller, with only two doors opening off of the landing. One for a cool, sunlit reading room, the other to a well-furnished master bedroom. Donovan sets his bag gently down at the foot of the bed and looks around. There, a balcony. Donovan steps outside.</p><p>The forest is bare and empty, the winter air harsh and centering. Donovan collapses into a chair, takes out his earbuds, and listens to the roar of the quiet, louder in its own way than the streets back in the city. Somewhere, water rushes, soft and distant.</p><p>On the roof of the club, it’s so easy for Donovan to see Brandeis’ ghost. The divot in the wall where he rested his glass. Donovan can’t imagine Brandeis here. He doesn’t know if that’s a good thing.</p><p>He expected he’d have more cleaning to do. But the house feels ready for him. Waiting, almost. At the club, Donovan had been waiting. He doesn’t know what he was waiting for, other than this. It’s a perfect match.</p><p>It’s been a long day, and the sun is setting. Donovan hauls himself to his feet, surprised at the strength in his leg. Still, no reason to push it any further. He heads back inside and climbs into bed.</p><p>Sleep embraces him, easy and gentle.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>In Donovan’s experience, there are two types of dead person.</p><p>The first type he’s seen many times. In buses, before his knee got bad, on the roof of the club after, but mostly he’s seen them from across the bar. The Red Strings Club is dark and warm and always quiet. It’s a good place for the dead. They drape their coats across the backs of their stools just like everyone and ask him for a drink with their hollow gray voices. Donovan doesn’t need to ask Numen what to serve those customers. He pours them three fingers of regret and leaves them to their thoughts. They need their scant hours of rest before they go back to stumbling through the motions of living.</p><p>Donovan has only encountered the second type once. The type of person who has last words to say, last phone calls to make, last things to tell a lover while their blood scatters onto the sidewalk several stories below them. The type of person who could have been alive (should have been alive) but knows when they have no more aces up their sleeve.</p><p>Donovan tries not to think about the second type of dead person.</p><p>It usually comes for him in the dull smog of mid-morning, when he should be asleep. His only visuals of the death were a brief glimpse through a security camera, but he didn’t spend decades in the club without getting good at imagining places. Too good. Good enough that the waking nightmares can turn a few security camera stills into a lot more than that. Between his imagination and the half-remembered terror-coated scraps of the phone call, it’s enough to keep Donovan awake for hours. The memories can hum loud enough to drown out the muffled roar of the city. In the thin silence of the house in Maine, there’s nothing Donovan can use to block out the sound of thunder through a phone receiver that echoes in his head. He stares at the unfamiliar ceiling and wonders just when it was that his luck started to run out.</p><p>Donovan stands up and rummages through his duffle bag. He brought his valuables, of course. On a morning like this, with the sun rising through the glass doors of the balcony, it’s worth using some of the good stuff. Donovan considers going downstairs to the kitchen to look for a glass before deciding it doesn’t matter. He takes a single swig of Blue Whisper straight from the bottle. It doesn’t burn on the way down. It doesn’t chime its way onto any emotions. It just feels cold.</p><p>Donovan goes back to bed.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Thank you for reading my little writing project :) Please feel free to leave constructive criticism!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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